Thursday, December 07, 2006

A man who has taken it on is Robert Hartwell Fiske, who runs an online monthly journal called the Vocabula Review (www.vocabula.com), which, as Mr. Fiske writes, "battles nonstandard, careless English and embraces clear, expressive English," and hopes to encourage its readers to do likewise. Vocabula means "words" in Latin, and words are the name of Mr. Fiske's game.

Mr. Epstein is the author of "Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide" (Atlas Books).